Q
230James
Brokenshire: The situation is somewhat more complex than
that, as the evidence suggested this morning, but we will come to that
later in Committee.
On
extradition, do you agree with the potential problem or challenge that
was identified by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and the police
in evidence on the increasing number of European arrest warrants and
what that might mean?
Mr.
Coaker: In the sense of the practical problems that
may arise?
Q
231James
Brokenshire: Yes. They suggested that numbers were
escalating almost exponentially.
Mr.
Coaker: I do not know about exponentially, but there
would be an increase once we became part of the Schengen information
system. Part of that membership, however, is to ensure that we have
better access to the system’s alerts and information. As you
know, currently, all the warrants that SOCA certifies are the
responsibility of the Metropolitan police, and Commander Gibson said
that that creates issues for him. From April, however, it will be the
responsibility not only of the Met, but of the regions. There will be
issues about that, too, but do I agree that there are issues about how
we practically manage, first, the situation from April? Yes, I do. Do I
believe that when we join SIS II and receive an increase in the number
of European arrest warrants, there will be practical implications in
respect of managing and dealing with that? Yes, there will be, and we
will have to deal with it.
Q
232James
Brokenshire: On Liberty’s key point about returning
people to the jurisdiction from which they have been extradited to, in
essence, serve their sentence, is the intention for it to apply to UK
nationals or simply to overseas
nationals? Mr.
Coaker: No, it could apply to UK
nationals. Again, it is clearly laid out in the Bill. The judicial
process obviously has to be consistent with human rights obligations.
It says on page 70 that, should the Secretary of State be involved
through the other route of people being returned, she can only act in a
way compatible with convention rights. As you know, if the Home
Secretary does not do that, it is open to judicial
review. I think that there are safeguards. I would
like to put an important point on the record that Shami Chakrabarti
made, which is that she does not see this as a titanic battle or as a
really fundamental clash of principles. It is actually trying to ensure
that the changes being made are consistent with our human rights
obligations, and, of course, we want to do
that.
James
Brokenshire: Sir Nicholas, we can obviously return to this
in Committee.
Q
233Dr.
Harris: To follow on from that question, I think that
Liberty’s point is that simply saying that everyone must act
within the convention is not the same as specific safeguards being
written into the legislation—I suspect that the Joint Committee
on Human Rights will say something similar. You described it as a
backstop that applies to anything that could possibly be imagined: you
cannot say, “Well, no one’s going to break the Human
Rights Act because there will be a judicial review”. I think
that Liberty is saying that you should write safeguards in, such as a
need for the Secretary of State to have a reasonableness test or some
evidence that removing someone to serve their sentence elsewhere might
lead to problems.
Mr.
Coaker: May I respectfully suggest that, if
Dr. Harris was right in that assertion, why would Liberty
say that this is not a titanic battle? Why would it say that there are
not huge issues of principle at stake? I hope that I am not
misrepresenting what was said this morning, but I am sure that I am
right in saying that Shami Chakrabarti said that this is not a titanic
battle of principle.
Q
234Dr.
Harris: I think that she thinks it is an obvious point.
You should not have a subjective requirement
that “the
Secretary of State is not satisfied that the return is
compatible” with
the European convention on human rights. You should replace it with an
objective requirement.
Mr.
Coaker: I understand the point that Dr. Harris is
trying to make. However, it is actually written into the Bill on page
17, proposed new section 153D, where is says that everything that the
Secretary of State does must be compatible with convention rights.
Rather than simply being assumed, it is laid out. That was the point.
We laid it out and tried to take account of that very sort of
objection. I will say again—nobody is above the law, so if the
Secretary of State did not act in that way, there could be a judicial
review.
Q
235Dr.
Harris: The specific provision that Liberty is suggesting
is that instead of the wording that you have pointed
to— “in
a case in which the Secretary of State is not satisfied that the return
is compatible”—
the Bill should say,
“if the return is not compatible”, so that the discretion
and the subjective view of the Secretary of State is taken out, which
enables the case to be made more easily. I think that that is
Liberty’s point, and I think that it is right to say that that
is not a titanic difference, but it is a substantive one.
Mr.
Coaker: I do not know whether it is titanic or
substantive. My point was that we can argue and debate this, but if
there was a fundamental problem in terms of an attack on the individual
liberties and human rights of people of this country, we would have
heard it this morning and we did not.
Q
236Paul
Holmes: This morning the Bar Council and Liberty expressed
concern about extending the principle that you can seize goods,
property, cash, family heirlooms and so on, from people who may in the
long run be found to be not guilty, but who are deprived of
that property. They were worried about abandoning the principle of
having to have some proof that the property constitutes ill-gotten
gains. Mr.
Coaker: They did mention those concerns; we all have
them. We do not want people who are completely innocent to have their
property detained. I do not have the transcript in front of me, but
interestingly the Bar Council did not say that it was opposed to the
provision. As you know, Mr. Holmes, you have a restraint
order and the items that you are concerned about stay in the possession
of the person you have concerns about. That is a big loophole,
particularly with low-value goods. It means that law enforcement
officers come to us and say that that gives people the opportunity to
squirrel the items away, to dissipate them. In the end, you do not have
the amount of criminally-gotten gain that you should be able to attack
when it comes to a confiscation order on conviction. So what we try to
do in the Bill is simply close that loophole in a proportionate way,
consistent with the principles that we have just talked about. The Bar
Council said that it understands what we are doing, but is concerned
about some of the
safeguards.
Q
237Paul
Holmes: I forget the exact wording, but the Bar Council
specifically said that there is a shift away from being able to put up
cash instead of the possession. It said that that is a significant
shift, not just a tidying-up
amendment. Mr.
Coaker: It is a serious
tidying-up.
Q
238Paul
Holmes: Or a substantive one even.
I think that
I know the answer to my other question, given what the police said on
Tuesday about how relatively new a lot of this work is. You legislated
on the asset recovery regime in 2005 and again in 2007, and now, a year
and a couple of months later, you are legislating on it again. Why have
there been so many changes in such a short
time? Mr.
Coaker: In 2007-08, £136 million was
recovered, and a further £33 million or £34 million was
recovered in the first few months of 2008-09. That is
progress—the restraining, the courts and so on—but is it
enough? No, it is not. Do we want to do more? Yes, we do. This is a
developing area of policy. We have moved considerably on the proceeds
of crime, taking ill-gotten gains off people, but I do not
think—I will be blunt—that we would have been able to get
through Parliament legislation such as we are now proposing, had that
been what we started with. But by acting bit by bit, step by step, we
have enabled the public to see working the changes to legislation that
enable us to take from people the ill-gotten gains that we do not want
them to benefit
from. Regarding
low-value goods, the public themselves on my estates and yours, too, I
am sure, turn around and say, “Why is it that somebody has been
arrested but is still driving around in their vehicle, still flaunting
their wealth, still being a terrible role model for young people? We
don’t want that to happen. Why isn’t the state doing
something about it?” That is what we are trying to do in this
clause. There is a proper debate to be had about safeguards—how
the measure should work and what should be done—but the public
policy objective surely has to be that if somebody is trying to make
money from crime, we ought to do everything we can to stop
them and to stop them benefiting from it. That is what I would expect as
a citizen, that is what my constituents expect, and I am sure that it
is what all Members’ constituents
expect. Q
239Paul
Holmes: Finally, based on the proportion of cases that
have failed, what sort of compensation bill do you
expect? Mr.
Coaker: Shall I be honest? The answer is that I do
not know. Compensation arrangements are available in the Bill because a
consistent, proper, proportionate way is to ensure that the law works
effectively but, if the law does get it wrong, people should be
compensated.
The
Chairman: It is appropriate that the Minister should have
the last word. It is now 3 o’clock, so that brings us to the end
of this sitting. I thank Alan Campbell, Under-Secretary of State at the
Home Office;
Jim Fitzpatrick, Under-Secretary of State for Transport; and Minister of
State Vernon Coaker for the helpful evidence they have given and the
way they have dealt with all the questions.
The
Committee will in a moment be adjourned by me until next Tuesday at
10.30am when we will begin the clause-by-clause consideration of the
Bill in Committee Room 11.
I now call
the Whip to move the motion, and I will give him the words so that he
can repeat them: That further consideration of the Bill be now
adjourned. Ordered,
That further consideration of the Bill be now
adjourned.—(Mr. Ian
Austin.) 3.1
pm Adjourned
till Tuesday 3 February at half- past Ten
o’clock.
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